I can't believe it's been 17 years. One single event has changed eveyone's lives so much, some more than others.
I was at home in Hong Kong with my husband that evening watching TV as usual. My husband was working in an international sales team at that time, and had a collegaue based out in SFO who was actually in NYK that day. He was staying next to the Twin Towers and left his hotel just a little earlier and escaped the impact, The next few moments, my husband's mobile phone was ringing like mad, everyone was checking for updates. His boss wanted him to coordinate support (he workd in telecoms) for their clients in NYK remotely to see if there were anything the company could assist with. Great customer service right, but did they boss ask about the poor guy stranded out in NYK? Not once.
Time flies right? I can kind of understand your husband's boss. When 3-11 happened in Japan I was working for a Japanese company in California. We made plans to evacuate our Tokyo office and send people to Osaka incase of Fukushima. We forgot about one contract person though. Sometimes in tense situations these things happen.
I hope your husband's colleague is ok. Anyone near ground zero breathed in that toxic dust. I think the cancers have killed almost as many people as the attacks did.
My brother was living in NYC at the time, but luckily further uptown, away from the toxic dust.
Thank you for your story.